President Donald Trump’s administration announced Friday that it won’t require mining companies to prove they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution, despite an industry legacy of abandoned mines that have fouled waterways across the U.S.

The move came after mining groups and Western-state Republicans pushed back against a proposal under former President Barack Obama to make companies set aside money for future cleanup costs.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said modern mining practices and state and federal rules already in place adequately address the risks from mines that are still operating.

Requiring more from mining companies was unnecessary, Pruitt said, and “would impose an undue burden on this important sector of the American economy and rural America, where most of these jobs are based.”

The U.S. mining industry has a long history of abandoning contaminated sites and leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for cleanups. Thousands of shuttered mines leak contaminated water into rivers, streams and other waterways, including hundreds of cases in which the EPA has intervened, sometimes at huge expense.

The EPA spent $1.1 billion on cleanup work at abandoned hard-rock mining and processing sites across the U.S. from 2010 to 2014.

Since 1980, at least 52 mines and mine processing sites using modern techniques had spills or other releases of pollution, according to documents released by the EPA last year.

In 2015, an EPA cleanup team accidentally triggered a 3-million gallon spill of contaminated water from Colorado’s inactive Gold King mine, tainting rivers in three states with heavy metals including arsenic and lead.

The Obama-era rule was issued last December under court order after environmental groups sued the government to enforce a long-ignored provision in the 1980 federal Superfund law.

“It’s galling to see the Trump administration side with industry polluters over the America taxpayer,” said Bonnie Gestring with Earthworks, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

“We’ll see them back in court,” she added.

The proposal applied to hard-rock mining, which includes precious metals, copper, iron, lead and other ores. Coal mines already were required to provide assurances that they’ll pay for cleanups under a 1977 federal law

Hard-rock mining companies would have faced a combined $7.1 billion financial obligation under the dropped rule, costing them up to $171 million annually to set aside sufficient funds to pay for future cleanups, according to an EPA analysis.

The mining industry and members of Congress from Western states welcomed Friday’s announcement.

National Mining Association President Hal Quinn said the Obama proposal resulted from environmentalists using litigation to force the government into what he said was an unnecessary rule.

“Today’s action shows that reason can prevail,” Quinn said.

Hard-rock mines in the U.S. produced about $26.6 billion worth of metals in 2015, according to the association. Of those mines, the EPA had said 221 would be subject to the dropped rule.
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Republicans pushed a nearly $1.5 trillion tax bill through the Senate early Saturday after burst of eleventh-hour horse trading, as a party starved all year for a major legislative triumph took a giant step toward giving President Donald Trump one of his top priorities by Christmas.

“Big bills are rarely popular. You remember how unpopular Obamacare was when it passed?” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in an interview, shrugging off polls showing scant public enthusiasm for the measure. He said the legislation would prove to be “just what the country needs to get growing again.”

Trump hailed the bill’s passage on Twitter, thanking McConnell and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. “Look forward to signing a final bill before Christmas!” the president wrote.

Senate approval came on a 51-49 roll call with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the only lawmaker to cross party lines. The measure focuses its tax reductions on businesses and higher-earning individuals, gives more modest breaks to others and offers the boldest rewrite of the nation’s tax system since 1986.

​Corker balks at debt increase

Republicans touted the package as one that would benefit people of all incomes and ignite the economy. Even an official projection of a $1 trillion, 10-year flood of deeper budget deficits couldn’t dissuade GOP senators from rallying behind the bill.

“Obviously I’m kind of a dinosaur on the fiscal issues,” said Corker, who battled to keep the bill from worsening the government’s accumulated $20 trillion in IOUs.

The Republican-led House approved a similar bill last month in what has been a stunningly swift trip through Congress for complex legislation that impacts the breadth of American society. The two chambers will now try crafting a compromise to send Trump.

After spending the year’s first nine months futilely trying to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law, GOP leaders were determined to move the measure rapidly before opposition Democrats and lobbying groups could blow it up. The party views passage as crucial to retaining its House and Senate majorities in next year’s elections.

​Democrats deride gift to wealthy

Democrats derided the bill as a GOP gift to its wealthy and business backers at the expense of lower-earning people. They contrasted the bill’s permanent reduction in corporate income tax rates from 35 percent to 20 percent to smaller individual tax breaks that would end in 2026.

Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has said the bill’s reductions for many families would be modest and said by 2027, families earning under $75,000 would on average face higher, not lower, taxes.

The bill is “removed from the reality of what the American people need,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. He criticized Republicans for releasing a revised, 479-page bill that no one can absorb shortly before the final vote, saying, “The Senate is descending to a new low of chicanery.”

“You really don’t read this kind of legislation,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told home-state reporters, asked why the Senate was approving a bill some senators hadn’t read. He said lawmakers needed to study it and get feedback from affected groups.

Democrats took to the Senate floor and social media to mock one page that included changes scrawled in barely legible handwriting. Later, they won enough GOP support to kill a provision by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., that would have bestowed a tax break on conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan.

​Tax panel: $1 trillion added to debt

The bill hit rough waters after the Joint Taxation panel concluded it would worsen federal shortfalls by $1 trillion over a decade, even when factoring in economic growth that lower taxes would stimulate. Trump administration officials and many Republicans have insisted the bill would pay for itself by stimulating the economy. But the sour projections stiffened resistance from some deficit-averse Republicans.

But after bargaining that stretched into Friday, GOP leaders nailed down the support they needed in a chamber they control 52-48. Facing unyielding Democratic opposition, Republicans could lose no more than two GOP senators and prevail with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence, but ended up not needing it.

Leaders’ changes included helping millions of companies whose owners pay individual, not corporate, taxes on their profits by allowing deductions of 23 percent, up from 17.4 percent. That helped win over Wisconsin’s Johnson and Steve Daines of Montana.

People would be allowed to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes, a demand of Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. That matched a House provision that chamber’s leaders included to keep some GOP votes from high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California.

The changes added nearly $300 billion to the tax bill’s costs. To pay for that, leaders reduced the number of high-earners who must pay the alternative minimum tax, rather than completely erasing it. They also increased a one-time tax on profits U.S.-based corporations are holding overseas and would require firms to keep paying the business version of the alternative minimum tax.

Deal on DACA?

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who like Corker had been a holdout and has sharply attacked Trump’s capabilities as president, voted for the bill. He said he’d received commitments from party leaders and the administration “to work with me” to restore protections, dismantled by Trump, for young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children. That seemed short of a pledge to actually revive the safeguards.

The Senate bill would drop the highest personal income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 38.5 percent. The estate tax levied on a few thousand of the nation’s largest inheritances would be narrowed to affect even fewer.

Deductions for state and local income taxes, moving expenses and other items would vanish, the standard deduction, used by most Americans, would nearly double to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples, and the per-child tax credit would grow.

The bill would abolish the “Obamacare” requirement that most people buy health coverage or face tax penalties. Industry experts say that would weaken the law by easing pressure on healthier people to buy coverage, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the move would push premiums higher and leave 13 million additional people uninsured.

Drilling would be allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Another provision, knocked out because it violated Senate budget rules, would have explicitly let parents buy tax-advantaged 529 college savings accounts for fetuses, a step they can already take but which anti-abortion forces wanted to inscribe into law. There were also breaks for the wine, beer and spirits industries, Alaska Natives and aircraft management firms.
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Despite criticism from Washington over Cambodia’s crackdown on the opposition and accusations that the U.S. helped plot Prime Minister Hun Sen’s downfall, U.S. Ambassador William Heidt has said that America’s support for Cambodia’s economy will not be negatively impacted.

Heidt told VOA’s Khmer service on Wednesday that the embassy’s mission to strengthen the bilateral relationship with Cambodia remained of paramount importance.

“For me, the key next step is helping to connect Cambodia’s technology sector with the big American technology companies, which are investing throughout Southeast Asia, mostly in Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City,” he said.

“I think Cambodia is developing fast in technology, but it has not yet broken out of Cambodia, gotten a hook in with the regional technology network. And, that’s what I am going to do next and I hope to do that in the first half of next year,” he added.

Economic growth

The United States is focused on promoting Cambodian economic growth to connect U.S. investors with Cambodian technology companies, Heidt said.

The U.S. Embassy and Cambodian government have been at odds over accusations that Washington conspired with the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) to overthrow Hun Sen in a so-called “color revolution” — a reference to attempts by pro-democracy movements to overthrow autocratic regimes in parts of the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and the Middle East.

The U.S. Embassy has denied allegations of interference.

Heidt said the allegations were categorically false.

“I don’t spend a ton of time on this issue because there’s really no more for us to say. And, I mean, nobody, nobody believes this in America. Nobody in our government, nobody in our society,” he said. “We, on the American side, feel very strongly that we have been a great partner for Cambodia. We really helped Cambodia to develop in many ways and we want to keep doing that.”

Hun Sen, one of China’s closest regional allies, is a former Khmer Rouge officer who has ruled the southeast Asian country for more than three decades. He has intensified his rhetoric against the United States amid a crackdown on opponents and the media before next year’s general election.

Earlier this month, Cambodia banned the opposition party after arresting its leader, Kem Sokha, and charging him with treason in September.

Heidt said he felt a deep regret at the government’s decision to move to dissolve the CNRP, which has led the White House to reconsider its foreign relations with Cambodia. He said the Trump administration was reassessing Cambodia’s eligibility for preferential trade agreements.

“Since I came here, let’s be honest, the Cambodian government has taken a lot of steps against the government of the United States,” he said. “They cut our military exercises, they threw [a] detachment out of the country, they made all of those accusations against us related to the political situation.

“I feel like there has never been an honest desire by the Khmer government to have a good relationship with the United States,” Heidt added.

Some changes needed

Phay Siphan, government spokesman, said Phnom Penh did not desire to sour the relationship with the United States, but added that there were “some little activities” that needed to end in order for relations to improve, including suggesting Cambodia was “pro-China.”

Hun Sen is in China — Cambodia’s biggest donor and lender — this week for a Communist Party conference in Beijing, where he will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Actions seen as anti-U.S. have included Hun Sen’s request that the U.S. forgive a $505 million debt for food and agricultural goods. Cambodia’s Lon Nol government borrowed the money in the 1970s, during its civil war with the Khmer Rouge. China wrote off debts incurred in the 1970s by the Khmer Rouge regime about 15 years ago.

In January, Phnom Penh suspended joint military exercises with the U.S., citing the local June elections as the cause, while rejecting suggestions that its decision was related to military and financial ties with China.

Most recently, after the U.S. announced on November 17 that it was ending funding for the upcoming election, the pro-government Fresh News website reported that Hun Sen said in a speech to garment workers that he welcomed the cut in U.S. aid, and urged Washington to cut all assistance.
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Egyptian billionaire businessman Naguib Sawiris condemned on Friday a crackdown on graft in Saudi Arabia, saying the purge had undermined the rule of law in the Kingdom and would deter investment.

In unusually outspoken comments, Sawiris, a well-known business figure in North Africa and the Middle East, also accused Qatar of destabilizing the region, and said there were only a handful of Arab nations that were safe to invest in.

Saudi security forces rounded up dozens of members of the country’s political and business elite last month on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in what was billed as a war on rampant corruption.

Sawiris, whose family’s Orascom businesses have interests ranging from construction to telecommunications, said influential figures should stand up to the Crown Prince, whom he referred to as “this young man”.

“We need to tell him ‘no’. There is the rule of law and order. You have a transparent process. Where is the court? What is the evidence? Who is the judge?” he told a conference in Rome, questioning the Crown Prince’s motives.

“Are you not part of this? Where did you get your money? Didn’t you do this? What is the system?” he said.

Prince Mohammed has said Saudi Arabia needs to modernize and has warned that without reform, the economy will sink into a crisis that could fan unrest. Critics say his purge is aimed at shoring up his own power base, which the Saudi government denies.

Sawiris said “everyone with a conscience” should speak out, but added that many were too frightened to do so.

“Everyone is scared because they have interests there, they have the oil, they have the money. But you need to have a conscience. When I say this, I know I am done-for in Saudi Arabia. No more business (there). Ok, I don’t care.”

A monthly Reuters poll published on Thursday showed Middle East fund managers had become more positive towards Saudi Arabian equities after an initial market sell-off following the launch of the anti-graft drive.

But Sawiris, who is not known to have major investments in Saudi Arabia, predicted business leaders would steer clear of the country in future.

“I think after what happened in Saudi Arabia, no one will invest there,” he said.

Sawiris also took aim at Iran, accusing the country of interfering in the affairs of its neighbors. He likewise denounced Qatar, saying it was funding terror groups.

“Why don’t they take care of the prosperity of their own people instead of financing crazy clergymen who push young men to go and kill?” he said.

A group of Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt cut ties with Qatar in June, accusing it of fomenting instability. Qatar, a tiny Gulf state, has denied supporting militants.

Asked where was safe to invest in the Arab world, Sawiris mentioned Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan and Sudan, but jokingly dismissed Lebanon.

“The problem with Lebanon is they are all sharks and they leave nothing to anyone. Only a crazy person would invest in Lebanon,” he said.

 
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The United States has formally told the World Trade Organization (WTO) that it opposes granting China market economy status, a position that if upheld would allow Washington to maintain high anti-dumping duties on Chinese goods.

The statement of opposition, made public on Thursday, was submitted as a third-party brief in support of the European Union in a dispute with China that could have major repercussions for the trade body’s future.

China is fighting the EU for recognition as a market economy, a designation that would lead to dramatically lower anti-dumping duties on Chinese goods by prohibiting the use of third-country price comparisons.

The U.S. and EU argue that the state’s pervasive role in the Chinese economy, including rampant granting of subsidies, mean that domestic prices are deeply distorted and not market-determined.

A victory for China before the WTO would weaken many countries’ trade defenses against a flood of cheap Chinese goods, putting the viability of more western industries at risk.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told Congress in June that the case was “the most serious litigation we have at the WTO right now” and a decision in China’s favor “would be cataclysmic for the WTO.”

Lighthizer has repeatedly expressed frustration with the WTO’s dispute settlement body and has called for major changes at the organization.

The USTR brief, which follows a Commerce Department finding in October that China fails the tests for a market economy, argues that China should not automatically be granted market economy by virtue of the expiration of its 2001 accession protocol last year.

“The evidence is overwhelming that WTO members have not surrendered their longstanding rights … to reject prices or costs that are not determined under market economy conditions in determining price comparability for purposes of anti-dumping comparisons,” the brief concludes.

The move comes as trade tensions between Washington and Beijing are increasing as the Trump administration prepares several possible major trade actions, including broad tariffs or quotas on steel and aluminum and an investigation into Chinese intellectual property misappropriation.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing on Friday that some countries were trying to “skirt their responsibility” under WTO rules.

“We again urge relevant countries to strictly honor their commitment to international principles and laws, and fulfill their agreed upon international pacts,” Geng said.

The Commerce Department on Tuesday launched the first government-initiated anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations in decades on Chinese aluminum sheet imports.

U.S. officials say that 16 years of WTO membership has failed to end China’s market-distorting state practices.

“We are concerned that China’s economic liberalization seems to have slowed or reversed, with the role of the state increasing” David Malpass, U.S. Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, told an event in New York on Thursday.

“State-owned enterprises have not faced hard budget constraints and China’s industrial policy has become more and more problematic for foreign firms. Huge exports credits are flowing in non-economic ways that distort markets,” Malpass said.

The brief submitted to the WTO also argues that China should be treated the same way as communist eastern European countries, including Poland, Romania and Hungary were when they joined the WTO’s predecessor organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A senior U.S. official said those countries eventually earned market economy status as evidence of state subsidies and state distortions waned. He added that going forward, WTO members wishing to use third-country price comparisons against Chinese imports would need to keep presenting evidence of economic distortions.

 
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The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has finally ended

In all, 17 named storms swept across the Atlantic this year and 10 rose to hurricane status. But the season will be remembered for the deadly trio — Harvey, Irma and Maria — that brought death and destruction to Caribbean nations and the southern U.S.

This was the first year on record in which the continental United States was hit by two Category 4 hurricanes, Harvey and Irma.

Harvey made landfall in South Texas on August 25, leading to days of downpours that dumped an unprecedented 152 centimeters (60 inches) of rain. It was the greatest rainfall amount recorded from a single storm in U.S. history.

Harvey also damaged or destroyed about 200,000 homes as the storm system flooded much of Houston and smaller coastal communities.

Then, on September 11 came Irma — the strongest storm on record in the Atlantic, outside the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. With maximum winds of nearly 300 kilometers an hour, Irma destroyed the Caribbean island of Barbuda, shredded vast sections of the Virgin Islands and knocked out power in much of Florida.

September also saw the arrival of Hurricanes Jose, Katia and Lee, before Category 4 Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico on September 20.

It was the U.S. territory’s strongest hurricane landfall since 1928. With sustained winds of 250 kilometers per hour, Maria knocked out power across the island, causing the biggest blackout in U.S. history. The island is still struggling to restore power as millions remain without electricity two months later.

Bloomberg News reports the 2017 hurricane season was the most expensive on record, with an estimated $202.6 billion in damage. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is expected to release the official damage tally early next year.
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Germany, Europe’s most robust economy, said Thursday that its unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent in November, the lowest figure since West and East Germany were unified in 1990.

Even as Chancellor Angela Merkel and other Berlin politicians struggle to form a coalition government, the German economy remains strong, with a months-long dip in the country’s jobless rate and solid demand for German products from other countries.

The German report came as Eurostat, the statistics agency for the European Union, said the jobless rate for the 19-nation eurozone bloc that uses the euro currency dropped to 8.8 percent in October. It was the lowest figure since January 2009, when Europe and countries across the world were in the midst of a steep recession.

The German and European jobless rates trail those in the United States, the world’s largest economy, where unemployment has dropped to 4.1 percent, a 17-year low. But the U.S. and European numbers point to steady improvement that had been slow to emerge after the devastating job losses and high unemployment seven to nine years ago.

Eurostat said more than 14 million people remained out of work, but that was 1.5 million fewer than a year ago. In Spain, the jobless rate has been cut from about 25 percent to 16.7 percent.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said that while wages still are not increasing much, they could rise in the coming months as the continent’s economy continues to rebound.

Patrick Chovanex, chief strategist at New York-based Silvercrest Asset Management, told VOA the U.S. is in the eighth year of its recovery.

“It’s a recovery that has kind of waxed and waned,” he said. “One of the things that has been happening over the past couple years is that different parts of the economy were waxing and waning out of sequence with one another. So housing would be strong while manufacturing would be weak, and then vice versa. Every so often they happen to coincide.

“Right now we’re seeing a pattern of several elements of the economy being strong at once. Hopefully, that will continue.”
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OPEC agreed on Thursday to extend oil output cuts until the end of 2018 as it tries to finish clearing a global glut of crude while signalling it could exit the deal earlier if the market overheats.

Non-OPEC Russia, which this year reduced production significantly with OPEC for the first time, has been pushing for a clear message on how to exit the cuts so the market doesn’t flip into a deficit too soon, prices don’t rally too fast and rival U.S. shale firms don’t boost output further.

The producers’ current deal, under which they are cutting supply by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in an effort to boost oil prices, expires in March.

Two OPEC delegates told Reuters the group had agreed to extend the cuts by nine months until the end of 2018, as largely anticipated by the market.

OPEC also decided to cap the output of Nigeria at around 1.8 million bpd but had yet to agree a cap for Libya. Both countries have been previously exempt from cuts due to unrest and lower-than-normal production.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has yet to meet with non-OPEC producers led by Russia, with the meeting scheduled to begin after 1500 GMT.

Before the earlier, OPEC-only meeting started at the group’s headquarters in Vienna on Thursday, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said it was premature to talk about exiting the cuts at least for a couple of quarters and added that the group would examine progress at its next meeting in June.

“When we get to an exit, we are going to do it very gradually… to make sure we don’t shock the market,” he said.

The Iraqi, Iranian and Angolan oil ministers also said a review of the deal was possible in June in case the market became too tight.

International benchmark Brent crude rose more than 1 percent on Thursday to trade near $64 per barrel.

Capping Nigeria, Libya

With oil prices rising above $60, Russia has expressed concerns that such an extension could prompt a spike in crude production in the United States, which is not participating in the deal.

Russia needs much lower oil prices to balance its budget than OPEC’s leader Saudi Arabia, which is preparing a stock market listing for national energy champion Aramco next year and would hence benefit from pricier crude.

“Prices will be well supported in December with a large global stock draw. The market could surprise to the upside with even $70 per barrel for Brent not out of the question if there is an unexpected interruption in supply,” said Gary Ross, a veteran OPEC watcher and founder of Pira consultancy.

The production cuts have been in place since the start of 2017 and helped halve an excess of global oil stocks although those remain at 140 million barrels above the five-year average, according to OPEC.

Russia has signaled it wants to understand better how producers will exit from the cuts as it needs to provide guidance to its private and state energy companies.

“It is important… to work out a strategy which we will follow from April 2018,” Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday.
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Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said Wednesday that Trump administration demands for a U.S.-specific automotive content requirement in NAFTA were “not viable,” and he declined to specify when Mexico would formally respond.

At a news conference following a series of meetings with senior U.S. trade officials and lawmakers in Washington, Guajardo said that Mexico was still trying to understand the U.S. proposals that would require 50 percent of vehicles’ value content to be produced in the United States as part of updated North American Free Trade Agreement rules.

“I was clear that the domestic content [requirement] is something that is not viable at this point,” Guajardo said.

He added that Mexico would eventually make a counterproposal on automotive rules of origin, but declined to specify the timing of that response.

His visit was partly aimed at bolstering support in Congress for NAFTA at a time when tax legislation is consuming lawmakers’ attention and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is growing frustrated with the slow pace of NAFTA talks.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to scrap the trade agreement if it cannot be renegotiated to shrink U.S. trade deficits and return manufacturing jobs to the United States.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said after meeting with Guajardo earlier  Wednesday that congressional Republicans “are determined” to strengthen trade ties with Mexico.

“I expect the administration will continue to work with us to modernize NAFTA and bolster our robust relationship with such an important ally,” Ryan said in a statement.

US waiting on counterproposals

After the last NAFTA negotiating round ended last week, Lighthizer complained that Mexico and Canada had not offered counterproposals to its demands on autos and other major areas aimed at “rebalancing” the trade pact.

The United States also is seeking to lift the regional value content requirement for NAFTA-produced cars and trucks to 85 percent from 62.5 percent. Guajardo said that once Mexico has a firm understanding of the U.S. autos proposal, it can work with its own stakeholders to see what adjustments could be made to regional content for autos.

But he said that the U.S. demand to move to 85 percent regional content within three years was “entirely unrealistic.”

Guajardo said he discussed with Lighthizer on Tuesday how to move the talks toward consideration of potential “rebalancing” outcomes. But first, he said, Mexico needed to be clear with its American and Canadian counterparts about unacceptable proposals and its priorities for keeping the pact beneficial to all parties.

“We have to start a process of looking at what’s next after we complete the modernization effort,” he added.

On dispute settlement, Guajardo said that Mexico would be willing to consider some adjustments to the investor-state dispute settlement system, after the United States proposed making the use of such arbitration panels optional.

“We can explore the opt-in, as long as we can define our own opt-in,” Guajardo said of the dispute settlement proposal, adding that otherwise, Mexico is “not interested.”

At a more limited round of NAFTA talks in mid-December in Washington, Guajardo said it would be important to agree on key issues in order to close some NAFTA chapters, such as those on food safety, telecommunications, regulatory practices and digital commerce.
…

Opposition has grown among Americans to a Republican tax plan before the U.S. Congress, with 49 percent of people who were aware of the measure saying they opposed it, up from 41 percent in October, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

Congressional Republicans are trying to rush their tax legislation to a vote on the Senate floor before the end of the week. President Donald Trump strongly backs the bill and wants to sign it into law before the end of the year.

In addition to the 49 percent who said they opposed the Republican tax bill, 29 percent said they supported it and 22 percent said they “don’t know,” according to the Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll of 1,257 adults conducted from Thursday to Monday.

When asked “who stands to benefit most” from the plan, more than half of all American adults surveyed selected either the wealthy or large U.S. corporations. Fourteen percent chose “all Americans,” 6 percent picked the middle class and 2 percent chose lower-income Americans.

The tax bill being crafted in the Senate would slash the corporate tax rate, eliminate some taxes paid only by rich Americans and offer a mixed bag or temporary tax cuts for other individuals and families.

As congressional discussion on the bill has unfolded, public opposition to it has risen, on average, following Trump’s unveiling of a nine-page “framework” on September 27 that started the debate in earnest, Reuters/Ipsos polling showed.

On October 24, for example, among adults who said they had heard of the “tax reform plan recently proposed by congressional Republicans,” 41 percent said they opposed it, while 31 percent said they “don’t know” and just 28 percent said they supported it.

Trump and his fellow Republicans are determined to make a tax code overhaul their first major legislative win since taking control of the White House and Congress in January.

The House of Representatives on November 16 approved its own tax bill. The Senate is expected to decide on Wednesday whether to begin debating its proposal, as the measure moves toward a decisive floor vote later this week.

The two chambers would need to reconcile differences between their plans before legislation could be sent to the White House for Trump’s signature.

In the November 23-27 poll, 59 percent of Republicans supported the tax bill, 26 percent said they did not know and 15 percent opposed it. Among Democrats, 82 percent opposed it, 11 percent said they did not know and 8 percent supported it.

 
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